


I Will Die By Your Hand

by detritius



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Fatalism, Hand Jobs, Knives, M/M, Melancholy, Suicidal Ideation, frank discussions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:03:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4307895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detritius/pseuds/detritius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will thinks he knows how this will have to end, but that isn't enough to stop him. Slight spoilers for "Apertivo," set sometime in season three but largely AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Die By Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> I learned a new word, and it inspired me to write this fic:
> 
> _Autassassinophilia_ \- a paraphilia in which a person is sexually aroused by the risk of being killed
> 
> Title is taken from "The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot" by Brand New.

Will returns to his little boat after dark, weary down to his bones. He's aware, in too many ways, of the futility of what he's doing. Looking for Hannibal has been like standing in the pool of shadow cast by clouds. Hannibal is everywhere around him in scorched earth and drying blood, but he's unreachable. He's leading Will on. He won't be found until he wants to be, and then... That's something Will hasn't been able to think about. He has no reckoning to promise himself, no resolution to guide his hand. His life constricts down to the point when he'll see Hannibal again, and after that... nothing. Any future he can see disappears into a fog, and the dread he should feel tapers off that way, too. Heading down below decks at the end of another day, all he wants is for this to be over.

There's a lamp lit in his cabin, and he knows.

He turns a corner and Hannibal's there on the edge of his narrow bed, hands clasped between his knees. "You came looking for me," he says, and his eyes are dark and unreadable.

Will swallows and tries to find his voice. "You knew I would. You told me where to go." The flame in the lamp gutters, casting leaping shadows, the hollows under Hannibal's eyes giving his face the half-starved appearance of a skull. The cabin is close around them, and there doesn't seem to be enough air.

Hannibal stands and comes toward him, moving as in a dream. And Will goes to him. The boat rocks and settles under his feet, and his legs feel like vapor. Hannibal grasps his shoulder familiarly, his fingers leaving trails on Will's icy skin, and he slides past and behind him. One arm comes up around Will's waist and pulls him back, flush with Hannibal's warm, solid frame. "Why are you here, Will?" Hannibal breathes, hot against his ear. The tip of a blade settles in the hollow of his throat and Will tips his head back, unresisting. He feels Hannibal sigh against his neck, the tip of his nose buried in the short hair at his nape. "Have you come on behalf of the FBI?"

"I wanted to see you." The words are almost soundless out of his mouth, but he knows Hannibal hears them. "I've missed you."

"And I you." Soft against his skin, so close Will can feel his lips moving. Neither of them can seem to raise their voice above a whisper, and there's only the constancy of their hushed and living sounds, the lull of harbor waves, and the unbroken quiet of the night. Hannibal's breathing is a heated echo of the tide, each exhalation a mournful sigh. "I've been unable to forget that I meant for you to come here with me." He holds Will close, if only to keep him from struggling. The kiss of his knife is so familiar, and Will knows without knowing that it's the same blade that opened him before. "I wanted to show you the wonders of the old world. Now, when I stand in the halls where great men walked, I imagine you by my side. These places are tainted now."

Will thinks of Abigail, and his voice is strange and far away. "Things can never be the way they were."

"No," Hannibal says, solemnly. "It's rare we get the chance to turn back time, and we cannot alter the consequences. A moment revisited will always come to the same inevitable end." 

Will's all too aware of that as the curve of the linoleum knife presses his Adam's apple, his throat thick and constricted with the ghost of pain to come. But for all it could be nearing its terminal beat, his heart is regular and slow, and his legs aren't shaking with the need to run. Now that they're both here again, he accepts everything. But Hannibal's living in a different moment, one before acceptance. Keeping Will transfixed with the threat of the knife, Hannibal pats him down, frisking him, passing his free hand over his chest and stomach, lingering around his hips. Will's glad for the dark that hides the sudden profusion of heated blood, in his face and elsewhere. His breath catches, falters. "I'm unarmed."

"I know." Hannibal's breath, warm and heavy like a grassland predator's, fans out exquisitely across Will's neck, raising goosebumps there. His hand steals under Will's shirt, deft fingers tracing the wide arc of his scar, and now Will's heart is racing. "How long did it take for you to heal?"

Will fights down the urge to struggle out of his grip, hot shame flooding him, making him shake. Eyes downcast, he says, "I still haven't." This is the man who framed and maimed him, brought him to ruin, who could kill him now with a single motion of his hand. That should drive away desire, dampen it at least, but even knowing what Hannibal could do to him, forcing himself to relive the agony of his evisceration, Will feels flushed and tight and _full_. And if Hannibal keeps touching him, he won't be able to hide it. 

"They did beautiful work with you, whoever sewed you up," Hannibal murmurs, still tracing his mark, possessive, his hands like tongues of flame. The knife that left it is almost a caress, a single drop of blood welling at its point as Will trembles under his touch. "I see they saved most of your nerve endings."

Will can only moan.

Hannibal reaches the lowest point of the scar -- _no, no, don't go any further_ \-- and lights on the unblemished skin underneath. "You'd let their efforts go to waste?"

"It wasn't a waste," Will says, breathless, his eyelids fluttering. "I made it this far, didn't I?"

Hannibal hums his assent as his hand drifts up Will's chest and down in an ever-expanding circuit. "I'm grateful to them, then, if they saw that you lived long enough to return to me." And then, without surprise, he says, "You're hard."

"I know," Will says, his voice breaking, his eyes squeezing shut.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Hannibal murmurs, both soothing and rational, and Will almost laughs, almost chokes. "A side effect of the adrenaline. So much commonality between arousal and fear." 

Hannibal stops touching him and that, of all of this, is unendurable. "It -- it isn't that," Will admits, forcing it out, burning with his shame. Then Hannibal's hand slides low over the front of his pants and he's moaning. "Please, Dr. Lecter."

The lightest pressure against his inseam and Will's head falls back, his breathing ragged. Hannibal makes short work of his zipper and brushes against the thin fabric inside, need like bile, rising. Will presses back, trying to grind against him, seeking something absent with his ass and thighs, twisting his arm looking for something to touch. "No," Hannibal says, "I can't do this with you, Will, only to you." He traps Will's wandering hand and guides it up to his sternum, encouraging it to drift across flushed skin. "Touch yourself as I touch you. Deny yourself none of the pleasure you want to give to me." He lets Will's hand go, and Will's feeling himself up, groping his own pectorals and groaning as his nipples peak and swell under his fingertips. That groan becomes a whine as Hannibal's hand dips back below his waist. "Why are you here, Will?" This time, when he asks it, he's kissing a spot under Will's ear, unfastening his belt and drawing him out.

Now, the words escape him on a shudder of heated breath. "I wanted to see you." 

Hannibal sighs against him, and Will can almost believe in his regret. He encloses Will in his fist, his mouth hot at his neck. "We can only see so much and live." Friction, and sloppy open-mouthed kisses between Will's collarbone and his ear. "I left you with your life, even after you betrayed me. Did you think I would spare you a second time?"

Will legs are trembling, his eyes almost rolling, but he hasn't forgotten anything. He's not far gone enough to misunderstand the question, just too far to manage a lie. "...no."

Hannibal's teeth at his earlobe as he tightens his fist, and Will's clawing at his own chest, mewling. "I gave you the chance for another life, in your classroom or fixing motors in the boatyards of your youth." Hot breath on the wet spots left by his mouth, suck bruises and little pulsing bites, the skin so over-sensitized. "I don't know if I planned to stay away, but if I called on you, it would only have been to look. To see you." Faster now, harder, twisting his wrist. "You were safe from me, and you came anyway."

Will is hot, tight, reeling, losing control of his hands. Pressure building low in him, and he gasps for breath. "Yes."

Hannibal stills, his hand going slack around Will's cock. "Were you hoping I'd kill you?" The question hangs between them for endless seconds, but when Will doesn't fight him off or deny it or go soft, Hannibal resumes stroking him, kissing his neck, gentler now, whispering like sweet nothings in his ear, "I could make it very fast, almost painless. I know just how to cut you. You'd bleed out in seconds." The flat of the knife, warm from his skin, pressed to Will's throat, showing how he'd do it. "And I wouldn't seek to humiliate you in death. No one would ever find your body."

The words that come out of him are not his own. "You'd honor every part of me?"

Hannibal kisses him sweetly at the corner of his mouth. "Nothing would go to waste. You'd be with me always." His strokes are long and slow now, purposeful, his cheek pressed to Will's, his whole body enveloping him, the arm wrapped around his shoulders just holding him up. "Is that why you came here, Will? To be part of me?"

And Will can't find the words to answer him, just drags in a breath, convulses, and comes without a sound.

Hannibal doesn't let him fall, supporting him when his knees give out. He's limp and yielding in Hannibal's arms, defenseless. Do it, he thinks, but doesn't have the strength to say. Do it now. At last, he manages, "Dr. Lecter?"

"Yes?" At the edge of his awareness, he feels Hannibal's attentions still focused on his midsection, the touch of fine fabric, cleaning him up.

Will struggles with the words, but he has to say what he's thinking. "Will you do something for me? As... as a courtesy?"

"You can always ask." Hannibal tucking him away again, straightening his clothes, making him presentable. Even with no one else to see him, Hannibal doesn't want him disgraced.

That gives Will the courage to speak. "Don't... serve me to anyone. Please."

No hesitation, no hint of surprise at his request. "You'd rather I kept you for myself?"

"Yes." The word leaves him on a sigh, and the last of his strength goes with it.

Hannibal gathers him up and pulls his heavy, boneless body back against his chest. "Then when the time comes, I'll eat every bit of you. You have my word."

All at once, Will wants to cry, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the feeling. Better things to feel in this moment: Hannibal's strong arms around him, his steady heartbeat, the thunder of his breath, the rolling waves beneath them, a last memory of peace. Will's voice is all but gone. "Thank you."

He senses Hannibal's nod behind him, hears him swallow, try to speak and then stop. For a long time, Hannibal only holds him, but at last he says, "Close your eyes," 

Will's eyes are closed already. He tips his head back, expecting the hot slash of the knife, but even its slight sting is gone, replaced by Hannibal's hands around his throat. When he squeezes, Will sputters and gags, pitiful, involuntary sounds. He starts to feel lightheaded. "Shhh," Hannibal breathes. "Shhh. Be still now." Lights explode behind his eyes. His breathing goes from a gasp to a wheeze, then nothing. The brush of Hannibal's lips against his forehead and, hazily, Will thinks this is the last thing he'll ever feel. 

From somewhere far away. "I'm sorry, Will."

 

There's nothing but blackness around him, but it presses on his senses, different from the gentle dark behind his eyes. Then, lapping waves and the sound of his lungs, fading into one another. The smell of salt water. Warmth and pressure. The weight of his limbs. Will can feel his body, and he thinks that means he's alive.

He's on his boat still, in bed with blankets tucked around him. No sign of anyone else. He tries to call out, but his voice is little more than a rasp and a dull ache in his throat. The boat rocks under him, lulling, and all is quiet. He's alone.

He fumbles in the dark, heavy and clumsy, and the world doesn't slip away. There's a pounding in his head that feels like unreality. But his searching hand comes to rest on something tangible, a lamp, blown out but left in easy reach, and next to it, a book of matches and something else he can't identify. He lights a match and, in its feeble light, sees what else he's holding: a card bearing Hannibal's elegant script. 

_Not yet._

**Author's Note:**

> I was entirely unsure how I was going to end this. The ending you see here is actually the second one I wrote. The original ending was an epilogue that takes place an unspecified amount of time later. Despite it's brevity, I decided to post it as a fic in its own right.
> 
> This was written and posted (by, like, a minute and a half) before "Dolce" aired, so any similarities to and differences from that episode are unintentional on my part.


End file.
